Hello, We just bought a CRM software and until today, each salesman had his own contact list in Outlook. I retrieved, for each of them, XLS files from Outlook and I copy-pasted it in one file. Thing is, now I have hundrds and hundreds of duplicate records . I would like to get rid of all the duplicates, how can I handle this easily? Thanks!
Are they all in excel or are they in a database? With excel you will need a VBA script to purge the dups. There's probably some instruction online on how to make something that would work. If they're actually in a database it would be fairly easy to loop through the data and delete duplicate rows.
Hello truster and jestep, Actually deleting all duplicates from the database might take a long time depending on the size of the contact list. I'd recommend you have a look at an ETL tool. It allows, among other things, to "clean up data" including deleting duplicate records. Also there are open source ETL tools, making it pretty easy to download.
I've been looking at those etl tools you talk about and would like to know which, among the open source etl tools, is the easiest to use? I'm asking because now I've seen what I can do with these tools, I'll use them on a regular basis (data integration?). Once I've chosen the one I'm going to use, I will come back with more technical questions. Thanks for your answers.
Have a look at Talend Open Studio: it is user-friendly, allowing business users to use it. But it also has advanced features intended for technical users (java debugger, code injection…). Simply put, it is a powerful tool but easy to handle. Go on their website http://www.talend.com/solutions-data-integration/data-migration.php . They have a forum and documentation you can read. Tell us what you think about the software.
For more information and to get answers about Talend, I would suggest you look at Talendforge. The site, well documented, will be able to help you : http://www.talendforge.org/